Laurie is North Loop, not downtown, and has a quite odd selection of old collectible books. It's fun, but I can't go buy the new Adichie novel, or Black Panther comic.

Milkweed is a better replacement, but is also not downtown (it's further from the IDS than the MIA is), is quite small (700 sq ft vs B&N's 25,000 sq ft), and focused on independent publishers, themselves foremost. Almost half their stock is poetry. Which is great! I love that store. But it's not a replacement.

They won't be having any more of a sale than they currently are, which is 50% off select things. Fiction, non-fiction, etc. books are not on sale, and will not be going on sale. They'll just be going back to the publisher.

It looks like Nordstrom Rack is walling off most of the windows...hopefully they will have lots of displays. I was hoping the storefront would be more transparent.

Also, it always makes me irrationally angry that Banana republic has no signage/display at all on their windows facing Nicollet. They used to have a little display on the skyway level facing 7th, but they even covered that and now it is just a little sign...and you can see through the frosted windows that they use the space for storage. Just drives me nuts...you would think they would at least have a sign facing the Nic and 7th corner so that people on the street and in other skyways could see they are there! Anyway, they will probably close before they would do a remodel, so I guess it is what it is. End random rant:)

Cool. That makes two businesses (Nic on Fifth Starbucks is the other) that have gone with street frontage for their main space/entrance and just a little, easily missed connection to the building's skyway lobby. Hope it catches on, rather than having more stuff like Kisa.

Also in downtown retail(ish) news:
There's a new dentist in the ground floor of the Baker block, right under the skyway to Northstar.
Roti opened this week in the IDS Center, getting it back down to a single (though huge) vacant space.
The Sports Authority space will become the Superb Owl Volunteer Center... which I guess at least activates the space through February. Better than nothing.

I was really hoping to see a dunkin donuts in downtown [there were supposedly coming to the cities, I haven't seen any], I think the space between Nicollet Mall Station and Warehouse Station is a great location, I think there are some empty storefronts there that need filling, :]

It is, at least as of a couple months ago. The bottle shop is still open as well, as far as I know.

I wonder if something else is going on at Heritage Landing. It could certainly be a coincidence, but having both of their retail tenants abruptly close within a couple months of each other is a little strange.